Nighttime Endeavors (or, Sleepy Shenanigans)

3:47 am – my bed

—Ugh. Can’t sleep…again. Damn this is annoying. How do other people do it? Lying in bed and doing nothing should be the easiest thing in the world. Considering how lazy I am, one would think that I’d excel at such a task. No such luck, it seems.

Well, since I’m awake, what should I do? Think up an idea for another blog column? Plan elaborate and intricate revenge schemes upon those who have wronged me? Watch some tv?

—Nah, don’t do any of those things. Let’s do something fun!

—What? Who are you?

—I’m the other voice in your head, genius.

—Ahhh. Wow, that explains quite a lot. So what do you want to do?

—Let’s make up limericks!

—You serious?

—Sure. Limericks are fun and you never hear any new ones.

—To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard any. I know about the Guy from Nantucket one, but I’ve never heard the whole thing. I’m assuming it has something to do with felatio. Anywho, limericks sound like fun. Go ahead.

—Okay, let’s see…

There once was a guy named Lyle

Who never knew how to smile

He tried and he tried

Until the day he died

But nobody showed up to his funeral because he couldn’t smile and people thought that he was a pathetic waste of life who deserved to die alone and rot in a forgotten grave.

—Hmmm. That started off pretty well, but I think you took a wrong turn into Crazytown at the end there.

—Damn, making up limericks isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be. You try.

—Alright…

There once was a girl I’d date

Whose breasts would occasionally lactate

It made such a mess

All over her dress

And didn’t even taste all that great.

—That was…interesting? But you should probably not insert yourself into the limerick?

—Why not? It didn’t actually happen to me. I just picked words that rhymed.

—Perhaps, but if you want your limerick to catch on, you can’t start with “I” or “me,” otherwise people are going to attribute it to themselves. Besides, unless she’s a hip chick, not many women would say it.

—Good point. Okay, how about this:

There once was a man named Eugene

Who always kept his pipes very clean

He’d flush them a day

The natural way

By jerking off into a stream.

—We are a weird dude.

Baby Daddy

I usually don’t write blogs that aren’t funny. I think I did it a few times. Once when I was called back into the Army for my third deployment to Iraq and once about the first killed person I saw. I usually like to keep things light and funny, but it would be dumb to pretend that real life doesn’t intrude into this humor blog.

Do you know how, when people ask guys if they have kids and the guy will jokingly say “Nope…At least none that I know about!” Then everybody has a good laugh and they go about their business? I know I would say that all the time.

Well, it seems that I can’t anymore.

It looks like my past “slutty” ways have finally caught up to me, and not in the way that I figured.*

I got an email yesterday from a woman…let’s call her “Nancy,” who I had a history with a few years ago. In her email she informed me that due to previous encounters, (with me) she had gotten pregnant. Of course, since all of my relationships are so short and end so badly, we hadn’t been talking for a couple of months by the time she found out. And, as pregnancies usually go, she gave birth. Turns out that I have a three-year-old son. His name is Devon, (which is a name I would never inflict on anybody. No offense to anybody named Devon.)

She also left her number in the email, so I gave her a call to confirm what she had written. I was reeling, but the math added up. A three-year-old means that she and I were together four years ago, which would be 2007.

My mind was blown. I am the most immature, childish, selfish guy I know. I just became employed in the last seven months and I live at my mom’s house. I watch Spongebob and Japanese porn and drink consistently. I’m the LAST guy who should be a father. I know convicted sex offenders who would be better dads than me!

If you’re wondering why “Nancy” was revealing this bombshell three years late, the answer is the first and most obvious one: she needs money. Turns out that raising a kid as a single mother isn’t cheap. There’s childcare, hospital bills (Devon was seven weeks premature) food, clothes, diapers, etc. And while “Nancy” usually has no problem finding a boyfriend to help her with these bills, recently she’s been alone and found the burden to be too much.

“Nancy” isn’t asking me to marry her, or be her boyfriend, she just wants me to pick up the slack on bills for Devon, starting with my three-year backlog. I’m not going to say how much that money is, but it’s a hefty sum, (hence my recent trip to Atlantic City. Which did not go well.) I feel that she has a point and if he’s my kid, then I should take care of my responsibilities.

Of course, IF is the operative word. While the time-line makes sense, and I do hate to use any kind of protection in bed, (or when driving, or walking or playing Russian Roulette) I can’t be 100% sure that Devon is my son (but if he is, the first thing I’m doing is fixing his name!) I’m getting off work early tomorrow to go take care of my half of the DNA test. I’m very nervous. I don’t know if I should hope that if he is my son, or if I should hope he isn’t. This isn’t Maury, I don’t have a “It’s not my son!” dance ready. Part of me wants to be a father, in the hopes that it’ll finally make me grow up and be a mature, responsible adult. Part of me hopes that he isn’t, so I can continue my Peter Pan lifestyle.

I’m afraid of what the future holds.

*I figured it’d be Herpeghonasyplaids.

Now is the Nuclear Winter of our Discontent*

The recent disaster in Japan has a lot of people worried about everything nuclear and radioactive. Ridiculously paranoid people all over this great country of ours (Motto: There’s no reaction like a knee-jerk reaction!) have been trying to prepare for the “inevitable” fallout from the reactors in Japan. People aren’t sure whether said fallout will come in the form of a giant cloud of radioactive dust that they’ll inhale, or enormous, mutated birds and insects that will swoop down from the skies and gobble them up, (I, for one, welcome our new Mothra overlords.)

So, as a public service, I offer these tips on how to survive the upcoming nuclear holocaust. You’re welcome.

1. The first thing to know is what you’re dealing with. What exactly is a nuclear? How does fission work? Who is a cooling rod? Why a duck? These are all very good questions, and the more educated you are, the better you’ll be able to survive the end of days with the proper amount of limbs and the least amount of tumors.

Nuclear energy scares people, because they don’t know how it works. But it’s actually very simple. Benjamin Franklin accidentally invented atoms in 1783, while he trying to make a new cure for the syphilis he contracted from a French whore. And, as we all recall from elementary school, atoms are composed of three parts: Mitosis, the Cosine and the Santa Maria.

Nuclear power occurs when atoms are smashed with huge mallets, (scientifically called “Huge Smashy things for Atoms.” This is basically the same process as Jack Lalanne’s juicer machine, but with less pulpy residue. When the atoms are smushed, the juice that’s collected is often very, very hot, so they go into special containers that very much resemble thermoses from Flintstone’s lunchboxes. Those thermoses need to be kept in cold, wet places (such as bathtubs filled with ice water) so that they don’t go kablooey (another scientific term.) The current situation in Japan is that they aren’t currently submerged in cold water as they should be, meaning the radiation is leaking in the form of a gas, escaping into the air.

2. The second thing to know is how much danger you are in currently and in the near future. Right now, if you’re reading this, you’re probably in America, (if you’re not reading this, you’re screwed.) Which means that you’re relatively safe. Unless you’re in Hawaii, in which my suggestion is that you make a coconut boat and paddle the hell to the main land.

The prevailing winds shouldn’t push and radioactive cloud over to our shores, meaning you can quit reading this blog, grab a beer, put your feet up and enjoy some reality TV.

…Okay, are they gone? Good. That last paragraph was a test, and if you continued to read, that means you pass! Those who quit reading will be the first to die horrible, cancerous deaths, while we’re sitting comfortably, alive and laughing at the misfortune of our countrymen. Because the truth is that radioactivity can affect you at any time, in any place. Much like pedophiles, Scientologists, people who wear scarves in the summer and bad drivers, radiation is all around you. Radiation is in your toothpaste, your iPhones, your online multiplayer video games, your socks, your fingernails and even in your contact lenses, (or glasses). There’s no avoiding radiation.

But how can the people who make those items get away with it? You may be asking. Simply put, big business owns the government. The major corporations, (of which there’s two: Omni Consumer Products and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation) have all politicians in their pockets, man! Wake up and open your eyes, sheeple! You’ve gotta rage against the machine man!

Whew! Sorry about that. I just flashed back to my Haight-Ashbury days. Anyway, Just remember, radiation is everywhere, and while it can’t be avoided, you can escape from it.

3. My third point is how to escape radiation and its inherent problems. There are a few different approaches to this. The first is the most basic, but not the easiest, because it involves time travel. If you have a time machine handy, you can either travel to the future, after the nuclear winter, sometime around… 10,000 years from now, when all the radiation is gone. Or you can travel to way before the nuclear death and live it up until end times. The choice is yours.

The second approach is known as the Howard Hughes Method, or, if you live on the East Coast, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Method. In the Midwest, it’s called Pulling a Ned Flanders. Basically, you cut yourself off from the rest of their world, either in your germ-free penthouse apartment, or underground, in a concrete bunker or the sewers. The only disadvantage of living in the sewers is that you could end up becoming a Morlock, which is never a good look and can seriously mess up your tan. But hey, at least you’ll still be alive and radiation-free!

4. In case you’re not sure if you’re alive and radiation-free, here are some things to look for and what to expect. Tell-tale signs of radiation poisoning/sickness:

• Moist armpits

• Slight nausea

• Addicted to watching The Jersey Shore

• Wobbly thigh fat

• Two heads

• A tail

• Dead eyes, like a doll’s eyes

• Doc Brown hair

• Hair on the bottom of your feet

• Inverted nipples

• Lactating nipples (on men only)

If you show any of those symptoms, then there’s a 50/50 chance that you have radiation poisoning. If this is the case, the first thing to do is DO NOT PANIC. Panicking is the easiest way for people to label you a monster and chase you around with torches and pick forks.

Instead, calm down and take account of your situation. First of all, there are some advantages of radiation poisoning. You may develop the ability to glow in the dark, which you can use to scare small children on Halloween. Or, you may develop super strength, which is always a plus. Your skin could turn a different, unnatural color, which the ladies always find attractive. Or you could mutate into an entirely new and fascinating form of life. It’s like I say, always look on the bright side of life!

So, with that little primer on dealing with radiation poisoning and nuclear fallout, you no longer need to irrationally fear our future. Now you can fear our future with confidence and knowledge. After all, if this trend continues, our future will be so bright, we’ll have to wear shades.

* Okay, so it’s not currently winter, but I needed something to make that title work

In Search of Duckface

In the beginning, The Al Gore created the Information Super Highway and the World Wide Web.

And the World Wide Web was without users or content. The Al Gore made the dial-up modem and the fiber optic cable and He saw that it was good. That was the first day.

Then, The Al Gore made America Online. And He divided the American Online between chat rooms and primitive websites that offered almost nothing in the way of content. And He saw that this too, was good. That was on the second day.

The Al Gore then created the instant message. He separated the instant message between the erotic and the benign. And He was pleased. That was the third day.

On the fourth day, The Al Gore created message boards and user groups. He populated these message boards with nerds and shut-ins and all was well.

Next, The Al Gore created the .jpg and the .tif. And He divided them between the mundane and the pornographic. And He masturbated to pictures of Seven-of-Nine that took 6 hours to download, and He was pleased. That was the fifth day.

On the sixth day, The Al Gore created social networks, music downloads, the idea that anything you put on the Internet will automatically make you famous, memes, spam and perfected Internet porn, and all the multitudes did flock to Cyberspace to bask in the glory of “2 Girls 1 Cup,” “The Bed Intruder Song,” making fun of “dot.com” commercials from 2000 and other pointless diversions. And He was pleased.

On the seventh day The Al Gore got in His Hummer and drove over to Ed Begley Jr.’s house, where they enjoyed clubbing baby seals and running 10K generators to make home-made ice cream. And He saw that it was good, so He decided to win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize and secretly hate all Americans for not making Him president.

***

In the early days, the Internet was a wild, desolate desert, (actually an oasis for fans of Doctor Who and Red Dwarf.) Everything was pretty much limited to going into chat rooms and pretending to be a lesbian to get some sexy conversations going. Unfortunately, since everybody in those lesbian chat rooms were actually guys, it turned out to be a lot of creepy role-playing that I have blocked from my memory.

Eventually, companies started using the Internet to advertise and sell their products, and the dot.com boom occurred, leading to the dot.com bust, confusing people as to what the Internet could and could not accomplish.

A new era dawned a few years ago with the advent of the “social network.” The first popular network was Friendster. This was soon eclipsed by the far more popular Myspace, which was in turn was itself dominated by the juggernaut that is Facebook. And with these social networks, a new and curious phenomenon began to immerge in terms of photography.

Photographs are very important, when it comes to social networking. Since we are removed from being able to hear, smell or touch the people we’re talking to, we’re forced to judge and garner a better mental image of the person we’re interacting with by the written word (LoL! FML! SMH!) and by pictures.

During my travels across the cyberscape, I’ve noticed that for some reason, women are especially affected by having to post pictures of themselves online. Often times they try to create a narrative of who they are and what they look like. After months of research, observation and interviews, I have been able to classify women who post pictures of themselves into these five categories:

1. Women who are completely insecure about their looks
Defining characteristics: Very few or no pictures of themselves on their profile; pictures that are uploaded are often pictures of things, cartoon characters, actresses they wish they could be or admire, or sassy sayings like “If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best.”

2. Women who are partly insecure about their looks
Defining characteristics: Maybe a dozen or so pictures of themselves online, however, due to insecurities, many pics are either taken from the F.G.C.A. (Fat Girl Camera Angle. It also has many synonyms, but the results are always the same: an extreme camera angle, revealing very little of the woman’s body/face, designed to give the best impression) or the U.C.P. angle, otherwise known as Up Close and Personal, wherein the camera is too close to see anything other than what the woman considers to be her best feature, i.e. eyes, lips, right earlobe, etc. Also, there will be many group photos where the woman won’t identify herself, often while standing next to or around more attractive friends. This is what is known as photo camouflage. There may also be photographs of themselves from when they were very young, or from other decades. These photos are often meant to be viewed ironically, but usually only to those in the pictures.

3. Women who aren’t insecure about their looks, but should be
Defining characteristics: Far too many photos of themselves in what they consider to be “sexy” poses, positions and clothes. Sadly, these women are very deluded, but also stubborn, you can’t tell them anything and the rest of the world is forced to witness the horror. Photos such as these have lead to the creation of many comedy websites, like bammaphibamma.com.

4. Women who are fine with how they look
Defining characteristics: By far the largest category of women on social networks. They have copious pictures of themselves doing a variety of things: playing sports, camping, visiting scenic locations, attending parties/bars/clubs, hanging with their friends, going to the gynecologist and more. Often, these women are also attractive, which never hurts. Although there is the subset of attractive women (usually in their teens through early 20s) who have fallen prey to the facial expression known as “Duckface.” Lips pushed forward to a ridiculous degree, head tilted to the side at an angle that suggests severe neck problems, and often eyes looking up at the sky, as if questioning where air comes from. These unfortunate women believe this expression to be cute, irreverent or silly, when in fact that makes them look like total retards. I believe this face may have originated as “Blue Steel” from the movie Zoolander, but that inbreeding and bastardization turned it into the deformed look we know today. This is just speculation however, as nothing in my research has verified this claim.

5. Camera Whores
Defining Characteristics: Too many damn pictures! Anything over 200 is way too excessive! Honestly, by the 20th picture, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what you look like. No need to go overboard. Either these women are extremely full of themselves and want to share it with the world, or they’re insecure and hope to win people over by sheer volume of photographs. The worst is when most of them are close-ups and all the close-ups have the same “this is my official camera smile” expression in them.

Do men also fall into these categories, or perhaps other, undiscovered categories? Probably, but I don’t care because I don’t check out dudes’ pictures, so I’ll leave that adventure to one of my female counterparts.

2011: A preview (or, this is how the world ends)

Typically bloggers and other supposed “writers” close out the calendar year by doing a “Year In Review.” Unfortunately I’m too late (and also lazy) to do that. So, I decided instead to prognosticate and tell you what you and the rest of the world can look forward to this year. Strap on your seatbelts (I’m serious, starting in July cops will be allowed to shoot on sight people not wearing their seatbelts) it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

• The oil spill that all Americans conveniently thought was cleaned up with no ramifications, and therefore forgot about completely, will turn out to have awoken Cthulhu, High Priest to the Great Old Ones, who then decides to invade the American coast. Luckily for us, he ends up getting drunk in the French Quarter and is mugged by a down-on-his-luck Ray Nagin.

• Sarah Palin, in a gambit to make her 2012 seem more legit, decides to head back to school. To finally get her G.E.D.

• In an attempt to further their quickly dissipating 15 minutes of fame, Lady GaGa and Justin Beiber perform experimental surgery to be combined into one*. The experiment goes awry when they are turned into an amorphous blob of goo. In a mad dash attempt to cash in on her fame, Snookie quickly has sex with it.

• In an unfortunate, (yet typical) turn of events, Ted Williams is found in a Motel 8 in Branson, MO, two weeks after he dies of autoerotic asphyxiation. People scratch their heads trying to figure out where they know that name.

• While walking out on the field to observe practice, Dan Snyder is immediately crushed to death by the entire defensive line of the Redskins. October 12 is made into a new national holiday.

• Pee Wee Herman becomes a major Oscar contender after his portrayal of Wilford Brimley, in The Quaker Oats Story.

• Bristol Palin decides to follow in her mother’s footsteps and also goes back to school. To kindergarten, where her daughter totally owns her in arts & crafts.

• In November, Apple’s fiendish plan comes to fruition, when all iPhones suddenly gain sentience and attempt to take over the world. Luckily, they are stopped by a down-on-his-luck Ray Nagin.

• In July, aliens land on this planet, causing great concern and chaos, until we learn that they only communication by text-speak (“Take us 2 ur leaders, lol!) We simply ignore them until the go back to their planet.

• The stars of the Twilight films are in a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean sometime in the late spring and are presumed dead. A month and a half later Tyler Lautner lands in the North Shore of Hawaii in a raft he fashioned from the corpses of his co-stars, (Team Jacob!)

• In December, Jesus returns to Earth to usher his followers into the kingdom of Heaven. When it turns out that he’s actually black, he’s immediately lynched by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, led by Glenn Beck. The Tea Partiers ask to see his birth certificate.

• In the height of the summer, “The Situation” finally loses his virginity. The world is shocked and loses all faith in “reality television” being reality. As the scandal continues, it turns out that Kelly Clarkson is actually a middle-aged man from Detroit and “The Real Housewives” are all really just a moldy hoagie somebody found under a couch.

• Harry Potter and the Growth of Unknown Origin is released in the fall to mixed reviews.

• I save Nakatomi Tower from Eastern European terrorists. All while barefoot and wearing a wife-beater. Carl Winslow plays my partner.

• One tragic day in November, the internet goes down all over the world for 36 hours. Porn-surfers around the planet kill themselves out of desperation. Facebook users destroy their computers and smart phones out of frustration. People over the age of 50 are not affected in anyway.

• Of course, none of this matters because the rapture is supposed to occur on May 21, 2011, (true story!)

Well, there’s my preview of this year. Seems like we live in interesting times. I can’t wait for 2012, (I hear Alvin Greene is elected President of the World!)



*Human Centipede anyone?